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A comment on What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka. Parent comment

Re:What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka by mehrdadn on Saturday May 16, 2020 @08:11PM (#23208280)
Just came here to post this comment. I feel like they must've known this when creating the terminology, so I can only imagine they called it "duality" because they wanted it to sound cool. But it's most definitely not duality and I would wager calling it that is actively harmful. Last thing you want is someone implementing a table under some misled impression that it can do everything a stream can!
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Re:What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka by eternalban on Sunday May 17, 2020 @08:06AM (#23211406)
This Confluent blog is a rehash of earlier conceptual position statement of Jay Kreps, who is now the boss of the Confluent blogger.

https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-wha...

Pointing out (GP and yourself) that this is an 'asymmetric duality' is informative and valid.

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Re:What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka by wenc on Sunday May 17, 2020 @11:35AM (#23212668)
Thank you -- it's food for thought.

A symmetric dual is one where there is equivalence: the dual of the dual is the primal.

But it is possible to have a "weak" duality that is assymmetric, where the dual encompasses the primal -- where there are regions of equivalence instead of a 1-to-1 equivalence.

I'm not sure if stream-duality fits this conceptual mold exactly but thank you for providing a counterpoint to my assertion. I'm going to think on it.

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Re:What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka by eternalban on Sunday May 17, 2020 @12:22PM (#23212987)
If one computes in a bounded time domain, then it is symmetric: a table is a ‘time slice’ of a stream.
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Re:What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka by goatinaboat on Monday May 18, 2020 @07:03AM (#23220868)
so I can only imagine they called it "duality" because they wanted it to sound cool

Also, that you believing it is the most profitable mindset - for them. Company blogs are marketing, first and foremost.

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